Camden council leader Georgia Gould meets a resident evacuated from the Chalcots estate

On Friday evening, outside Camden town hall, council leader Georgia Gould defended the decision to evacuate the nearby Chalcots estate due to safety concerns. Gould seemed genuinely worried, and told the BBC that Camden had been first in the queue to test its cladding, finding on Thursday that the panels fitted were “not to the standard that we had commissioned” and announcing they would be removed. At a public meeting the same night, Gould says residents raised other safety concerns she’d been unaware of: Camden council and the London fire brigade assessed the block, and the council was advised to evacuate.

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The contrast to the actions of Kensington and Chelsea council following the fire at Grenfell Tower the previous week could hardly be more stark. In the days following the blaze, leader Nick Paget-Brown appeared defensive and cool in television interviews. There was little attempt to apologise for the failings that led to the blaze, or humility – instead he seemed intent on denying the council had done anything wrong either before or after the disaster.

A week later, an exhausted-looking Gould showed how differently the aftermath might have been handled. Camden residents were understandably furious and panicked at being turfed out of their homes with little notice, and Gould said she’d been shouted at and cried on, while pointing out that the distress people felt was understandable.

Following the evacuation some residents were angry, calling it a knee-jerk reaction. But those affected were able to voice their displeasure directly to those they held responsible: Gould herself went door to door in the Chalcots estate, asking residents to leave. By contrast, Grenfell survivors and locals were kept at a distance from councillors and council staff. In the days following the fire Paget-Brown was nowhere to be seen. One woman evacuated from a block next to Grenfell told me: “If I want to see someone from the council, I have to turn on my TV: they won’t come down here and speak to us.”

It’s a tale of two leaders, but also a tale of two councils. Paget-Brown has far more experience: he was elected as a councillor in Kensington and Chelsea in May 1986, the same month Gould was born. Gould is the daughter of the late Labour grandee Philip Gould; at age 22, she had ambitions to become a Labour MP. She has been a councillor for seven years, and leader for just a month; Paget-Brown stepped into the role in 2013.

Grenfell Tower shows us what happens when 'red tape” is demonised and council services are rolled bac'

This is not to say that Camden does not have questions to answer over how safety issues weren’t identified sooner, and the discrepancy between the cladding agreed upon and the material installed. Siân Berry, a Camden Green councillor, has expressed concern that safety failures identified in earlier risk assessments were not dealt with promptly. But the current move to reassess housing in the borough could herald a sea change in the behaviour and functioning of councils in the wake of the west London disaster.

Over the past two decades, the way councils operate has changed: first under the last Labour government, with the rollout of private finance initiatives (PFI) for building projects and the proliferation of arms’-length management organisations and tenant management organisations in housing; then under the Tory austerity that has impoverished town halls across the country, many councils have been doing far less.

If it can be outsourced, it is – to often shoddy standards, as Grenfell Tower, Camden, and the Scottish schools scandal shows. In February, architects called for all PFI buildings to be checked, following the collapse of an external wall at an Edinburgh primary school in 2016 and a report raising serious concerns about 17 other schools in the city. Cuts have also seen services winnowed away. Many libraries have closed, domestic violence services and homeless shelters are under threat. Some councils continue to struggle on, while others such as Barnet and Haringey seem happy to outsource and privatise.

Yet Grenfell Tower shows us what happens when “red tape” is demonised, council services are rolled back and the market is left to provide instead. Lives are ruined, and central and local government are left to pick up the pieces and the bills. That Theresa May has had to release millions of pounds of additional funds to help survivors and mitigate safety concerns around the country shows prevention is far better than a cobbled together and inadequate response after the fact. If safety had been taken seriously, Kensington and Chelsea would have been unable to ignore residents’ concerns over fire risk. If other councils weren’t so desperate to cut costs, there would have been more frequent checks that companies weren’t cutting corners.

The community did everything it could to help Grenfell survivors and other local people affected by the fire, but should never have had to. Instead, residents should have had a council that responded to their concerns rather than doling out £100 council tax rebates, as well as a proper response from the town hall in the aftermath. Stripping back local services and support leaves lives diminished and in some cases destroyed. There is an opportunity now for councils to widen their hollowed-out remit, properly caring for people in need and avoiding the immiseration that austerity and closed services bring. Councils can and should be bigger, and more involved in people’s lives. It shouldn’t have taken so many lost lives to make us see this.